The application of treatment fluids, such as insecticides, fungicides and other crop treatment chemicals, including water and horticultural oils, to plants has been widely practiced for protection of the plants, including trees, row crops, nursery plants, and even residential plants. The highest distribution of insects and pathogens on a plant is commonly on the leaves, especially on the undersides of the leaves. However, it is generally very difficult to get adequate coverage of the undersides of the leaves when spraying the foliage with a fluid. For this purpose, fans or blowers are used which direct an open stream of air at high velocity into the plant foliage. This agitates the foliage to expose all leaf surfaces to the applied liquid. Although this may be effective for causing leaf movement, such a direct, high-velocity air stream may also damage tender leaves of plants that are sensitive to physical injury. As physical injury provides a point of entry for pathogens, this can result in significant crop loss or loss of the plant's aesthetic value.
In the past, there have been a wide variety of agricultural sprayers which are typically drawn by tractors, trucks or the like for spraying of liquid chemicals. Generally, prior art sprayers have large propellers or a number of propellers which create an air flow that carries the chemicals to the foliage. However, this type of prior art sprayer uses large amounts of chemical spray and does not always provide full or uniform coverage of the tree foliage. In addition, these sprayers generally spray at random while the trees vary in size, shape and distance between trees, requiring larger amounts of chemical sprays which increases the costs of spraying the trees while wasting chemicals and dispensing excess chemicals into the environment.
Additionally, commonly used sprayer systems include nozzles that are integrated with or otherwise permanently affixed to some part of the sprayer, such as a boom arm or the sprayer housing. Further, many systems have an integrated fan or air source for propelling the fluid onto the plants. Therefore, previously known systems require the applicator to have several complete sprayer units to apply a fluid to a variety of plant types. For example, an applicator may require both a sprayer system having nozzles affixed to a high, vertical boom arm and an integrated fan for spraying citrus trees, and a sprayer system having a low, horizontal boom arm without a fan for spraying delicate row crops such as berries and leafy greens.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a sprayer assembly that aerosolizes an applied fluid and allows for the application of a fluid to any of a variety of targets (for example, plants, buildings, open areas, ponds, or the like), even without a fan for propelling the aerosolized fluid from the sprayer assembly. It is further desirable to provide an interchangeable nozzle that aerosolizes an applied fluid and that may be used with any of a variety of sprayer types, even without a fan for propelling the aerosolized fluid from the nozzle.